Population growth rates in US and around the world - general decline in birth rates in 'advanced' countries

 This is an interesting report from NPR about the birth rates in the US and all over the world. Women and families are having fewer babies than they were decades ago, with more and more families making the conscious decision to not have babies. This is beginning to create significant changes in global population projections, but more immediately this is affecting economies and national planning around the world. Most significantly, here in the US, as well as China, many European countries, and elsewhere, there are not enough young workers to help the rapidly increasing number of elderly people. The big question is, is this sustainable? More and more countries and states are now below the replacement rate for sustaining a stable and growing economy, which will cause disruptions in nations. Another question is how will this affect future climate models and change the predicted global demographics, which then affect the future course of the human race?

These are important questions, and mix in with the questions being faced with the advent of AI, advanced robotics, and climate change. This is an inflection point in human history, with an unknown pathway ahead of us. 

Questions that come to mind include: 

- here and in other countries with aging populations and declining work forces, what is the future in quality of life for the elderly? We already know that program like Social Security and Medicare are financially unsustainable with the present funding model and reality. Fewer young workers will accelerate the financial pressures on retirement, how to deal with more and more elderly, the health care system, and other sectors of the economy. 

- Combining AI and robotics into the mix, since all of these big issues are obviously connected and inter-related: AI and robotics are disrupting the job marketplace in most sectors of the economy already, and soon these will have an effect on all aspects of jobs, daily life, and the economy. With more and more human jobs being taken over by AI and robots, the prospects, and, possibly, the quality of life for many young people, could be in decline. What jobs will young people have available to them? With even more uncertainty for young people, will this be a feedback loop that causes even further declines in birth rates? With uncertainty of jobs, how and why would we expect young people to be able to have and afford kids, even if they want to have children? And will this likely be a new pressure and discouragement to having babies? If this were to happen, it feeds into a worsening of the elderly situation. 

- Will the rapid and continuous improvements and advancements of AI and robotics (and soon to be quantum computing networks) provide the solution to the job markets' stresses, but at the same time only increase our reliance and need for more and more AI and robotics, which puts more pressure on what is available for humans to do? This is another likely (negative) feedback loop with unintended consequences for young people. 

- For today's teenagers and pre-teens who are seeing all of this in front of them, what will this do in terms of having hope? We have what may be a perfect storm of an aging society, climate change, AI and robotics changing economies and causing disruptions and vast uncertainties in job markets, nationalistic politics and possible authoritarianism in the US and other western countries, a 'war' on immigration that is creating further pressures on declining numbers of workers within the US economy, drastic and rapid increases in the wealth gaps between the uber-wealthy and average citizen, and questioning about what purpose humans can find within all these changes happening at once. Does anyone have good models for understanding all these massive changes at once? How can we deal with this when today's leaders are not even talking about and recognizing the complexity of all this change, let alone any possible solutions?

There is MUCH TO PONDER and digest here, and all of this is progressing faster than humans have been capable of keeping up with in terms of predictions, policy, planning, and processing to keep up with the changes. 

A Climate Report, if interested

 This is a recently published report showing evidence of climate change and global warming. Check it out if interested; it is always a good idea to actually see why scientists have been predicting and measuring climate change, induced by humans, since the late 1960s, when oil companies, of all entities, developed the first climate models. 

**WORTH THE WATCH: Where the AI race is likely taking the human race**

 Although this develops a very dark, maddening, and scary scenario for the future of humanity, it is the reality of our time that AI, and the quest of a handful of companies to "win the race" of AI dominance, is leading us down a potentially ridiculous pathway that limits human beings in what they will be able to do, and how one will be able to find purpose in life. 

This conversation between Jon Stewart and Tristan Harris is worth the watch - although terrifying, it is something we all should see, think about, debate, and take action by telling our representatives to actually WAKE UP and DO SOMETHING about developing guidelines, policies, regulations, and laws about what we want to happen with AI (and its integration into robotics and quantum computing). This will not be easy because it will fly in the face of what the AI Tech leaders want, who are all Mega-wealthy and powerful and integrated into the political world already, BUT WE HAVE TO TRY to build in something that still allows human beings to have purpose in this world. 

Keep in mind that just a few days prior to this post, Amazon announced it will be reducing its workforce by as much as 600,000 (one-third of its present workforce) by 2033, as they will be replaced by robots; they plan on automating 75% of its operations. This is happening in the present, and is no longer just a 'sci-fi' type possibility. 

You can help FEED SCHOOL CHILDREN IN MALAWI online!! Please consider checking out our EMPATHY Project

 The GoFundMe site for the EMPATHY Project is up and running. Please consider ANY amount, even something like $5 is around 8500 kwacha, and all of this adds up quickly to help multiple schools feed their children for the entire school year! Everything helps, and is appreciated by everyone involved! 

Check this out to learn more about the EMPATHY Project, where we help feed children for the school year in Malawi. 

Also, the spring planting season is fast approaching in the southern hemisphere, so this is an ideal time to contribute funds to help purchase seed and fertilizer! 

THANK YOU for your consideration! Below is a photo of a field of corn one of the schools owns and maintains, and the harvest is used to feed kids throughout the entire school year! We help support two dozen schools, and thousands of children. 

              

Website for independent science research for high school students

 For the educators out there - if you have students who have an interest and passion for wanting to try actual science research, but they do NOT have access to professional laboratories and universities (which is the VAST majority of high schools in the country, and globally), perhaps the CABS site can be useful and help find novel research questions students and teachers can pursue WITHOUT professional labs and equipment! There really are countless legitimate, discovery level projects students can take on by using equipment most high schools have, and can build the experiments in school or even in their own house! 

If you have students who are into coding, there are endless options for developing computational studies on just about any phenomena in any discipline. There are also online databases and datasets, as well as citizen science options, students can make use of! All these types of resources can be found with the CABS sites. For examples of actual student papers from their research studies, check these from former students. 

Two new resources for elementary teachers and students

 I am breaking out two new animated resources that are most useful for elementary teachers. 

The first is a STEM story I wrote some years ago, but just had the text. It is entitled Little Sue and the Rock, and is a story for children in grades 1-3. The goal is to introduce to younger children the concept of atoms, and what atoms are made of. It goes through electrons, and a nucleus, and then that a nucleus is made of protons and neutrons. But then it introduces the fact that protons and neutrons are made of still smaller pieces called up and down quarks! Quarks are typically unknown even to high school science classes, and therefore high school students, which seems silly to me since I think it is fundamental we present the most basic ideas of what the world is made of in simple, and accurate, terms. By the way, it is fun to encourage and challenge students to write stories that try to explain a science or math topic! 

The second resource has to do with Social-Emotional Learning, or SEL. Most schools in the country have made it a goal, at some level, to bring in more SEL to deal with some of the issues we've been dealing with with children and teenagers since the Covid pandemic, specifically mental health issues. But SEL has become politicized and is under attack in many regions of the country, and has begun to be frowned upon by many educators. The trouble is, the skills described and contained in traditional CASEL SEL are actually essential life skills any parent would want their children to be strong in, in order to have a healthy and successful life! I am proposing and pushing for a re-branding of SEL to EELS - Everyday Essential Life Skills needed for success! This is a short booklet with animated pages that introduce and define what the EELS are, and I ask all who are parents to decide if the skills shown are part of "left wing indoctrination", or if they are skills you yourself use every day of your life, and are skills any parent would want their kids to know and be strong in. I have yet to find anyone who does not want kids to be strong in the listed skills! 

What does E = mc^2 mean? What are the consequences?

In my classes, when we are going through the usual classical physics portions of energy and work, I also throw in a couple days of modern theories of energy, including special relativity and some basic quantum mechanical ideas. After we see one way of deriving E = mc^2, and Einstein's energy equation in special relativity, I want to make a point that this is a truly large breakthrough in our thinking of the physical world. I like to use E = mc^2 as a stepping stone to better understand the following:

The discovery of E = mc2 basically sets up the discovery of quantum  mechanics, and the weirdness we see with particles.

            Energy = matter, is effectively what this tells us.

These are two forms of the same stuff, like steam (energy) and ice (matter)  are two forms of the same H2O molecule.

     Whatever properties energy (waves) can have, then matter (particles)  has those properties.

     Whatever properties matter (particles) can have, then energy (waves)  has those properties.

Examples:

If waves have wavelengths, then so must particles

If particles have momentum, then so must waves (light/photons)

If matter is affected by gravity, then so must waves (light/photons)

This equation also re-defines conservation of mass and conservation of energy. In nuclear reactions, conservation of mass is violated, since products weigh less than reactants.

         Conservation of mass-energy is now more correct!

• This equation changed the course of history, as we entered the age of nuclear power and weapons.

• It allows us to understand how stars form and 'burn,' and their life cycles

• It allows us to understand how heavier elements are formed through thermonuclear fusion (nucleosynthesis; we are made of star dust!!)

• It allows us to understand how the universe can form from a burst of pure energy (Big Bang), as we have phase transitions from energy to matter or vice versa.

• The unification of space and time allows us to understand what causes gravity (warps in space-time)

• It allows us to understand how to make particle accelerators and explore the basic question, "What are we made of?"
• It led to the prediction of antimatter 

• It allows us to think in terms of multiple dimensions, giving rise to things like string theories

• It allows us to begin to understand radioactive processes, and nuclear physics

• The theory of photons allowed Einstein to understand photoelectricity (solar energy), for which he won the Nobel Prize

• This also helped lead to his discovery of 'stimulated emission,' the process that makes lasers possible

• It predicts 'matter waves' or the wave-particle duality, which is the heart and soul of quantum mechanics

Not bad for something that seems so simple and innocent!

Science Modeling: Example, Climate models

Because this was an election year, I think there was an increased interest among many about climate change, and whether or not humans have any impact on climate and global warming. For full disclosure, I am a PhD physicist and know several experts on climate science, and there is no question in my mind that humans have something, and likely most, to do with climate change...the multiple, independent studies and evidence for this is too great, and experts who study this don't even question whether this is still a question.

But what the vast majority of non-scientists do not understand and tend to ask me, is how in the world can any scientist make a prediction about what could happen 100 years in the future? Especially when weather forecasts on the evening news cannot even get the weather correct one week from now? A valid, and important, question. The answer is very sophisticated climate models and computer simulations.

"Huh??" is a typical reaction when someone hears this for the first time. Computer simulations involve taking a mathematical model, and in this case, for a global climate system, the sets of mathematical equations relevant to the system are crazy hard to solve...nonlinear, partial differential equations for a huge number of different phenomena, all interacting with each other to lead to what we observe in nature. So difficult is the math that no one can possibly solve these with pencil and paper, and worse yet no one can possibly run these crazy hard equations through time by hand. But with powerful, crazy fast computers that can do trillions of calculations per second (i.e. supercomputing systems), one can code up the equations and figure out solutions to them. The result is a prediction over time of what the world may look like given an initial set of conditions to start the calculations.

How does a scientist have any confidence that results spewing from the computer are at all realistic? How do we know if anything about the simulation is believable or reliable? Well, one can look at past climates and events that affected climate, and put those conditions into the computer model and simulation. Run the simulations for past events and conditions, and compare the simulated predictions to real data and results that are measured - if the real data and simulated results overlap, then one has some confidence that the simulation is working properly. Do this for a large number of past events, and if all of them are showing good overlap with actual data, then confidence grows.

One can then make predictions with the simulations, even for past data and climates. One can change the parameter values for all sorts of things, leaving others fixed in value, to see if the changed values can make significant changes in climate by themselves. When one does this with natural parameters one does not get the increases in temperatures that are measured over the past century (especially since the 1970s). However, when one changes the greenhouse gas parameters, that alone creates the increase in temperatures we observe. Computer simulations are one avenue to show that human contributions to increased greenhouse gases has caused the increase in global temperatures.

For an excellent example of all this in action, check our the TED talk by Gavin Schmidt. He shows the process of making the models, and shows predictions for the future, having gone through the calibration and verification process described above.

Getting students active outside of the classroom

Here is a link I was fortunate to have published on the Varkey Foundation blog. It deals with having as a teaching goal to get each student to try something, no matter how big or small, outside of the classroom, and not as a grade or extra credit, but just because they are hooked on something and want to do it on their own! It is a challenge, for sure, but can be done. And if teachers have this mindset, it helps them to encourage applications of the material taught in class, as well as promote creativity and curiosity in students. I think these life skills are generally more important than much of the content we teach in just about any course. The link is here. Note that there are other important blog posts from other Global Teacher Prize finalists on the Varkey site - we can all learn from some of the very best teachers on the planet!